Red Band Comics
Entry updated 25 November 2024. Tagged: Comics, Publication.
Mexican/US Comic (1944-1945). #1-#3 Publicaciones Recreativas (Mexico), #4 Lindsay L. Baird Inc. (USA). Four issues (but see below). Artists include Bernard Baily and August Froehlich. Scriptwriters include Bruce Elliott. 52 pages per issue, comprising five long strips and a short text story, plus some brief filler material. Though there were four issues, numbered #1-#4 (and with different dates), #2 has the same content and cover art as #1, whilst #4 has the same content and cover art as #3.
In #1 (and #2) we meet Satanas, a green-skinned Alien cyclops from Pluto (see Outer Planets), a scientific genius who is also "the most evil man in the universe": a thousand years ago he was told, "We of Pluto are not a kindly race! We make no pretence of honour, we have no particular virtues ... but you, Satanas, have gone too far! You make vice a virtue ... cruelty a practice." As Plutonians are unkillable and Satanas capable of escaping from any Prison on the planet, he is put in a Spaceship that has no controls and fired into space (see Crime and Punishment). He eventually arrives on Earth and walks onto a radio broadcast to announce he has decided to conquer the planet, but needs money to do so – therefore tomorrow he will steal the gold from Fort Knox. With his disintegrator gun (see Weapons) and paralysing Ray he is partially successful; although, as someone observes, America is off the gold standard and he will not be able to spend it in the USA.
The other genre strips in #1 (and #2) are: The Sorceror and His Apprentice, set in sixteenth-century Venice and concerning a sorcerer who acquires a young apprentice, Joe Djerk. They make enemies of the Borgias, but Magic and Joe's fortuitous blundering means they defeat an attack: Joe uses a spell to animate a broom, a nod to the strip's inspiration, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's poem Der Zauberlehrling ["The Sorcerer's Apprentice"] (1797). At one point the Sorcerer exclaims "by Cthulu [sic] and Melek Tawus", presumably referencing both the Cthulhu Mythos and the Yazidi Religion in which Tawûsî Melek is the Lord of this World. Captain Milksop is Mortimer X Mortimer, a wimpish clerk whom the other Red Band Comics characters take pity on, The Sorcerer declaring "by special permission of our copyright owners, we can [each] give this Mortimer one ... of our powers", though Satanas's offer of his power of evil is rejected. Mortimer thus becomes a reluctant Superhero, Captain Milksop. Another strip is The Bogey Man: Kendall Richards is a mystery writer also fights crime in a mask, blue hat and raincoat, recalling Will Eisner's The Spirit.
Though featured on the cover, Satanas and The Bogey Man do not appear in #3 (or #4); nor do any of the other strips above. Instead, there is the superhero Captain Wizard, a bored war veteran accused of murder who runs into an old wax museum where he meets Theophrastus Bombastus Paracelsus, an "adept in the magic arts" who recognizes the veteran is a good man and gives him a uniform which includes a magic cape: when the police burst in he flies out of a window. The magician is then revealed to be one of the wax dummies; as the historical Paracelsus' real name was Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, presumably it had been possessed by him. The rest of the story involves the Captain foiling a fraudster who claims to have invented a headset for the blind which uses radar (see Inventions). Impossible Man is Hugh Mann, "the weakest man on Earth", who – after initially contemplating Suicide – opts to build a Spaceship and fly to Mars instead. However the steering wheel comes off in his hands and he lands on "the lost planet of Brutus" inhabited by costumed supermen (Superman is indirectly acknowledged) and where the prefix "super-" is attached to many things. They pack Hugh in cotton and are planning to "exhibit this weird freak", when a villain who has learnt Hypnosis appears; the others are defenceless, but Hugh uses a mirror to reflect back his mesmeric influence. He is acclaimed as Impossible Man.
The other genre stories are "Murder Above the City" featuring newspaperman King O'Leary; here a German agent (see World War Two) dresses as a human fly to murder a partisan General. Mechanical wings help him scale a hotel wall, then as he climbs through a window he detaches the wings – which continue to ascend – and shoots the general; the wings climb back down, he girds them again and escapes. The logic – if that is not too flattering a term – seems to be that no-one would then suspect the human fly of the murder. "Ride That Nightmare" has a bathysphere containing Race Wilkins crashing into the sea floor, then continuing down. Race finds himself in a Lost World, meeting sea serpents, the Sphinx, Cerebus, unicorns, centaurs and Werewolves (see Monsters; Supernatural Creatures); he wonders if this land is the origin of these myths (see Mythology). As a twist it is he who baffles the Sphinx with the riddle that bears her name.
Though the plots are unremarkable, the details make these stories interesting, with the writer(s) of The Sorceror and His Apprentice and Captain Wizard showing off their esoteric knowledge; Impossible Man Parodying Superman stories; and Captain Milksop breaking the fourth wall. It seems the creators of Red Band Comics were either targeting an older audience than was typical of the era, or being a little self-indulgent. [SP]
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